Jack Lumer

Jack Lumer's elegant minimalism blends spirituality, memory, family and collective experience. With his competition entry, entitled A place where to sit down, the artist explores the historical relationship between Jews and Arabs, creating a symbolic compendium of Amazigh culture, a Berber community that has intertwined elements of both traditions over the centuries. Looking at the work from left to right, we first encounter, on a sandy background, the title phrase, written in pencil several times until it becomes a prayer or a ritual formula; this is followed by two human silhouettes, barely discernible as apparitions in the desert, and a vertical strip of blue-toned archival photographs. A charcoal portrait of a Berber woman then emerges in sharp chiaroscuro contrast, almost like a timeless icon. At the foot of the work is a traditional carpet woven in the Atlas Mountains, the ultimate symbol of home, a place to rest and find repose. Raised in New York, with a degree in Photography from the University of the Arts in London and in Visual Arts from Naba, Lumer demonstrates a luminous confidence in the creative act, as if the image were the true refuge referred to in the title, the dimension in which to reconcile past and present, and reunite what the winds of history would like to scatter.

Giulia Oglialoro